These Celtics are barely recognizable

The Celtics had the East's best record last year, then promptly turned over more than two thirds of their roster. What's left is a new superteam built around Kyrie Irving, Gordon Hayward, and Al Horford, but also one with youth waiting in the wings and a whole lot of uncertainty for how this is going to work.

To help us make sense of the madness, we brought on SBNation.com senior writer Paul Flannery and Celtics Blog contributor/CLNS Radio founder Nick Gelso to talk through the following.

The emotions of losing Isaiah Thomas after what he did last year, combined with the cold hard reality that the trade for Kyrie Irving needed to be made and IT was never going to match that success even if healthy. How is Kyrie warming up to Celtics fans?How will Kyrie fit in to Brad Stevens' offense? Early returns seem promising.Let's not forget about Gordon Hayward. The Celtics chose signing him over pursuing Paul George and Jimmy Butler. Can he make them justify that decision?Who plays alongside those two and Al Horford? Who plays in the backcourt? Do they have too many options, or not enough?What should fans expect from Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum this year? Why did the Celtics trade the No. 1 pick to get Tatum, anyway? What kind of dude is Brown, anyway?We circle back to Brown's comments about it being weird that the team traded IT while talking up tradition. What did we make of those?RIP Nets Picks.What kind of person is Kyrie, anyway? Is there more to him than we've seen before, or is there actually not as much? It's kind of weird how we've learned so much about him over these past three months. How much of it is authentic?Paul and Nick pick very different banana boats.We know they should be good this year, but what defines success for the Celtics? Does it even matter if they repeat last year and don't progress?Later on, Ben paid off a bet to a friend.

This is the 27th of Limited Upside's 30 team previews leading up to next season. We're bringing together representatives from all 30 SB Nation team sites and other team-specific experts from the SB Nation/Limited Upside community to gauge the temperature of the fanbase heading into the season.

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